Former Finance Minister, Seth Tekper, has agreed to some extent that credit rating agencies have been biased against African countries, such as Ghana.

This is coming after President Akufo-Addo described their actions as reckless and unfair.

However, Mr. Terkper wants African governments, particularly Ghana to be responsible with respect to the fiscal economy, adding, the government has not managed the economy well. 

Speaking on Joy FM Super Morning Show, the former Finance Minister advised respective African governments to live up to expectations to avoid such downgrades.

“There are socio-political issues as it suggests in Africa, from centuries especially slavery and colonization. So, I'm not going to deny any bias against Africa, but I think we should also own up in certain instances”.

“In 2015, all the domestic bonds were treated like Treasury bills and it was the Bank of Ghana that was issuing them and also refinancing them in conjunction with the Minister of Finance [Seth Terkper at that time] on behalf of government”, he explained.

Furthermore, Mr. Terkper stated that past experiences should advise the country to develop its own fixed-income or capital market to support emergency and developmental financing.

“It was only in 2015 that from our good building experience on the external bond market that we decided that we should adopt that method, took the bonds from Ghana and put it on our own stock exchange for the secondary trading of those bonds. Immediately, the market started to develop very fast, banks, pension funds, and people in the diaspora started to invest in those bonds. Today we have a domestic stock exchange. Is that how to develop a domestic African market?”

“Secondly, I want to also say that the situation where we were using total revenue to cover only interest and compensation was unsustainable and we needed to do a reversal that preceded Covid-19. In fact, it had cross-tax revenue and it was consuming total revenue before covid-19 struck, and it is a debate that we have had on your good programme several times”, Mr. Terkper continued.

He cautioned all against the negative description of Africa’s financial markets.